Intuition- what is it?

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Intuition – what it is? It is just fallacy as some believe or it is a significant ability that we got, that allow us to jump to conclusion without logical thought. What you think?

[The_Cat (Jeremy)]

Originally Posted by Karls48

Intuition – .... that allow us to jump to conclusion without logical thought. What you think?

Karl, before one can discuss this deep subject:

1. What is logical thought ?

2. We need to get an example:

Based on logical thought determine the focal length required of a guide scope.

What does one think?

Make the following logical statement and see what happens:

Logical thought and the WWW are mutually exclusive !!!

Jeremy.

[avandonk]

Intuition is the hard wired survival instinct carried by your genes. It is the product of blind evolution over countless generations from single cells to the complex organisms we are today. All living things have it.

Our intuition can be further modified by our ability to learn.

But in a time critical life or death crisis the automatic emotive and deep seated survival reaction trumps logic. It is much faster! By the time you figure out what to do it can be too late.

Man sees tiger, thinks what should I do? Tiger eats man.
You only have two alternatives. Freeze or run! Freeze is better.

Where our learning ability helps if you practice and practice all scenarios before they happen and hopefully when they really do, it will be a combination of instinct and skill that meets the emergency.

Airline pilots are a very good example as they stay very calm in a crisis because they have a logical plan that they can implement without hesitating as they have 'simulated' it all before (hopefully). This allows them to completely ignore any emotive urge and just calmly do their job. As they already have automatic responses that can overide any irrational fear.

This is my version of 'intuition'.

Bert

[Paddy (Patrick)]

My understanding is that intuition is the sum of mental processes that occur without our full awareness. Our conscious logic uses working memory which is quite limited in its capacity to handle lots of data. I recall hearing on "all in the mind" on radio national that some research shows that we make accurate decisions consciously for situations in which not much data is required, but that in more complex settings, we do well if we do some research and then follow gut feelings (usually given a bit of time to process) which are the output of our unconscious processing. I think this is different from instinct and training. Our intuition can also act quickly, but uses a great amount of sensory input that we are not aware of eg body language etc.

I was at a training session with an American professor of psychiatry, Dan Siegel who does a lot of work on the neurobiology of mind and he was saying that there are nerve fibres directly connecting the viscera with the frontal cortex, where intuition (by the above definition) resides - hence the truth of the notion of a gut feeling.

[avandonk]

Originally Posted by Paddy

My understanding is that intuition is the sum of mental processes that occur without our full awareness. Our conscious logic uses working memory which is quite limited in its capacity to handle lots of data. I recall hearing on "all in the mind" on radio national that some research shows that we make accurate decisions consciously for situations in which not much data is required, but that in more complex settings, we do well if we do some research and then follow gut feelings (usually given a bit of time to process) which are the output of our unconscious processing. I think this is different from instinct and training. Our intuition can also act quickly, but uses a great amount of sensory input that we are not aware of eg body language etc.

I was at a training session with an American professor of psychiatry, Dan Siegel who does a lot of work on the neurobiology of mind and he was saying that there are nerve fibres directly connecting the viscera with the frontal cortex, where intuition (by the above definition) resides - hence the truth of the notion of a gut feeling.

Yep that is what I said. You have just pointed out the mechanisms we are aware of.

Your immune system has many nerve connections to the brain. It is not an independent system.
Much the same goes for the rest of your organs.

I agree with what you said. Intuition is motive to act without reason. It is signals sent to the pre frontal cortex by cells that we are barely aware of. It is the remnants of control blindly developed by evolution to control the stupid multicellular animal so it has a chance to reproduce.

The fact that anyone of us exists today means that everyone of our ancestors managed to reproduce for about 3.6 billion years!

I do not think that a worm has much of a philosophy of life and existence. But if you disturb it, it reacts. We are far better than this of course. We react by killing our fellow humans indiscriminately when we are scared.

Bert

[Paddy (Patrick)]

Originally Posted by avandonk

I do not think that a worm has much of a philosophy of life and existence. But if you disturb it, it reacts. We are far better than this of course. We react by killing our fellow humans indiscriminately when we are scared.

Bert

Yes, we have come a long way.

[CraigS]

Its interesting to note this quote:

"Intuition (is) perception via the unconscious"

– Carl Gustav Jung

So .. I reckon there's a lot to say about perception … (& perhaps a lot less mystical, too).

Cheers

[Archy (George)]

Originally Posted by Karls48

Intuition – what it is? It is just fallacy as some believe or it is a significant ability that we got, that allow us to jump to conclusion without logical thought. What you think?

Intuitively, I'd say it's a significant ability that we have